By Andrew Robbins
CSMS Magazine Staff Writer
I think it is important that readers understand how the 7,000 political appointees impact our families. I started writing this article when I read that PNC Financial will buy National City Corporation. What made the deal sweet for PNC? They received $7.7 billion in cash from the federal government under the $700 billion government program aimed at relieving Wall Street’s credit crisis.
Prior to the purchase, National City this week aired that they had lots of cash to loan-out, they were financially in the position to purchase another bank, and they were well prepared to ride out the current crisis without seeking outside help.
The American public has been panicked and snookered!
How many small business owners would love to have the government give them money to buyout their competition?
Have you spoken with your banker lately? Make that call and ask, “Do you have money to lend?” I called four financial institutions and all claimed to have plenty of money available for worthy borrowers.
The $700 billion financial crisis/bailout is a rouse! It is intended to panic the public while centralizing the banking industry into the hands of a few wealthy families. If left unchecked, banking will become like gas stations, a monopoly where each location charges the same price and all prices change the same day the same time.
Note who the players are guiding this self-made crisis
First, Henry M. Paulson becomes Secretary of the Treasury June 2006. Before coming to Treasury, Paulson was Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Goldman Sachs. He rose through the ranks holding several positions, including Co-head of the firm’s Investment Banking Division.
Why do political appointees give up seven-figure salaries to work for the federal government? Influence. You change the course of history by using the government to impose your views.
Second important player is Neel Kashkari. He is the Treasury official heading the taxpayer-funded federal rescue program.
Mr. Kashkari joined the Treasury Department in July 2006 as Senior Advisor to Secretary Paulson. Prior to joining the Treasury Department, Mr. Kashkari was a Vice President at Goldman, Sachs & Company, where he specialized in investment banking mergers and acquisitions.
Mr. Kashkari supports using taxpayer funds for bank mergers.
The following insight can be found on the web in an article titled: Behind the Panic: Financial Warfare and the Future of Global Bank “using panic to centralize power.”
The titans of Wall Street have deliberately triggered bank panics behind the scenes in order to consolidate their grip on US banking. Now they must do something similar on a global scale to be able to continue to dominate global finance. That process of using panic to centralize their private power created an extremely powerful concentration of financial and economic power in a few private hands.
Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson pursues his Crony Capitalism to the detriment of the nation and benefit of his cronies in the financial world. There is also serious ground to believe that he is actually moving according to a well-thought-out long-term strategy.
Paulson, and his friends at Citigroup and JP Morgan Chase, had a strategy, knowing that at a certain juncture the pyramid of trillions of dollars of dubious sub-prime and other high-risk home mortgage-based securities would come falling down. They determined to spread the so-called ‘toxic waste’ securities as globally as possible, in order to seduce the big global banks of the world into their honey trap.
They had help. In recent testimony, Mr. Lynn Turner, Chief Accountant of the Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC) testified. The SEC Office of Risk Management, which had oversight responsibility for the Credit Default Swaps, was cut in Administration ‘budget cuts’ from a staff of one hundred down to one person.
There are questions, which Congressmen ought to be asking people like Henry Paulson and Josh Bolten. Are Mr Bolten’s fingerprints on the corpse here? And why is no one questioning the role of Paulson as CEO of Goldman Sachs, then the most aggressive promoter of exotic and other Asset Backed Securitization (ABS) products on Wall Street?
It now would appear that the Paulson strategy was to use a crisis. A crisis that was pre-programmed and predictable, as far back as 2003 when Josh Bolten became head of OMB, to panic the more conservative European Union governments into rushing to the rescue of US toxic waste assets.
Were that to happened, it would in the process destroy what was left of sound EU banking and financial institutions, bringing the world one step closer to a global money market controlled by Paulson’s cronies.
Paulson’s predecessor at both Goldman Sachs and at Treasury is Robert Rubin. Interesting to note is that Rubin is now a Director of Citigroup, one of Paulson’s crony bank ‘survivors,’ and the bank which to date has had to write off the largest sum in toxic waste securitized assets.
The Paulson plan is now clearly part of a project to create three colossal global financial giants—Citigroup, JP MorganChase and, of course, Paulson’s own Goldman Sachs, now conveniently enough a bank. Having successfully used fear and panic to wrestle a $700 billion bailout from the US taxpayers, now the big three will try to use their unprecedented muscle to ravage European banks in the years ahead.
The ABS debacle was ‘Made in New York.’ Nonetheless, its effects have to be isolated and viable EU banks defended, in the public interest, not just the interest of Paulson’s banking cronies as in the US. Unregulated offshore vehicles such as hedge funds, unregulated banking, unregulated insurance all went into building the $80 trillion ABS Tsunami. Certainly more conservative EU hands are not about to buy the remedy being offered by Washington.
F. William Engdahl is author of the book, A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order (Pluto Press Ltd.) and Seeds of Destruction: The Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation (www.globalresearch.ca). He may be contacted through his website,www.engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net.”
Mr. Paulson appears to have a conflict of interest and may not be the right person to represent Main Street. This financial debacle was self-generated in Wall Street’s boardrooms and by all appearances the Bush Administration has hired the fox to guard the hen house.
For those of us who have lost equity in our homes and witnessed our retirement accounts shrink, Paulson would not be our first choice to guide the nation through these challenging times.
If any of these allegations are true then we have the wrong person leading our recovery. We may end up adding one more name, Paulson, to the current President’s long list of failed political appointments. There is enough smoke here to suggest that under Paulson’s leadership we may all get burned.
Note: If you choose to forward this article, please include your representative and senators on your list of recipients. Remember neither the author nor CSMS Magazine is in the business of providing the public with financial services. Readers are advised to seek financial counseling prior to investing.
It’s Your Money, The Way I See It (Part IV)
It’s Your Money, The Way I See It (Part III)
Also see It’s Your Money, The Way I See It (Part II)
It’s Your Money, The Way I See It
Telling us the truth: Bailing out Wall Street or bailing out the country?
The financial crisis in the US and the mirage of an enlightened global capitalism
Global stock markets stumbled in the aftermath of the Wall Street downslide on Monday
Andrew Robbins is the author of “It Took My Breath Away: One Man’s Experience May Save Your Life.” He may be reached by email at: [email protected]
